General News
25 July, 2022
Pyrenees council look to outsource home care services due to funding changes
The Pyrenees Shire Council will consider no longer providing home-based care to residents, instead outsourcing to an external provider amidst detrimental changes to Federal Government funding. The government’s proposed Support at Home Program will...
The Pyrenees Shire Council will consider no longer providing home-based care to residents, instead outsourcing to an external provider amidst detrimental changes to Federal Government funding.
The government’s proposed Support at Home Program will begin from July 1 next year, changing the funding amounts currently allocated to councils through the Commonwealth Home Support Programme.
Council provides a subsidy of around $300,000 to the approximately $1 million service, which delivers domestic assistance, personal care, respite care and property maintenance to residents for upwards of 13,000 hours annually.
Council’s CEO Jim Nolan said the changes from next financial year will mean council would have to provide a larger subsidy for the community, something it cannot afford.
“Those changes will require council to do things in a significantly different way once they’re introduced — it will impact us financially as well as how the program is delivered locally,” he said.
“Council provides a financial subsidy for these services and has done for a number of years, however the model that is proposed into the future will require council to contribute a higher level subsidy and that’s something council is not in a position to be able to do without making pretty radical changes to other services we provide.
“Council is actively working to learn more about what these changes will mean and the implications moving forward.”
The organisation has begun an expression of interest process from relevant agencies who could provide ongoing services in the region and will consider its position as a service provider once those expressions have returned, which is expected to be by December.
“Council was keen to hear what those changes and the implications of those changes were and as a result of that, council made a decision to commence an engagement process with both staff and our clients,” he said.
“We also wanted to go through an expression of interest process just to test the capacity of the local market to be able to provide services into the community into the future.
“Before any definite decision is made by council, we are committed to doing that information gathering and consultation.
“Part of that is also about learning more about what other councils are doing and what the general response by the sector to these changes is and we’re very mindful a number of councils in our region have made the decision to exit from in-home care.
“The overriding thing from council’s perspective is ensuring our residents, the people who currently receive services and people who will require those services into the future, will be able to have access to the same or better services.”
Mr Nolan said while there were ways around the rising cost of delivering the service, he described council’s staff working in that field as irreplaceable in their connection with the community and clients.
“Council have been providing these services for many years and it’s actually a service we’re really proud of in terms of the quality of service that’s provided and our staff who deliver those services,” he said.
“Our staff have an excellent reputation of delivering really high quality services and care and these are people who are very heavily connected at a local level and care very much about our residents and clients.
“That’s something you can’t really replace and it’s something that’s a big concern to us moving forward in terms of whether that level of care will be provided moving forward.”
The changes also mean uncertainty for the future employment of those staff, something Mr Nolan said council is working to address.
“The uncertainty is a concern for any staff that are working in this area and it has been for a number of years, there have been lots of changes at a Commonwealth level over the last five years in this space so that uncertainty has existed,” he said.
“At this point in time we’ve been given a new deadline and we’re preparing ourselves for that but it may well be that the Commonwealth decides to extend that deadline or do something differently.
“We really appreciate that uncertainty is difficult and challenging for the staff involved in delivering this service, particularly because of the pride they take in what they do.”